There was a time when the media would ask, “What did he know and when did he know it.” Over the last half century it’s a question that can be asked of the media which has taken the lead in covering up scandals from its side of the political aisle, denying them and smearing anyone who pointed them out, only to later belatedly admit that its reporters knew that they were true all along.

Biden’s condition, as Dylan Byers documents at Puck from anonymous White House correspondents, is no different.

“Anyone who covers this White House knows he’s showing the signs of his age—he whispers, he shuffles, he misremembers,” one White House reporter told me. “Anyone with an elderly parent knows what this is.”

But it’s also one of those things they can’t talk about.

“It was something that felt indelicate to talk about,” one member of the White House press corps told me. In retrospect, some journalists felt like it probably warranted more coverage: “The amount of time we spent talking about it versus the time we spent reporting on it was not the same,” one of the reporters said. “There should have been tougher, more scrutinizing coverage of his age earlier.”

Democrats are currently caught between the party trying to protect Biden and leftists who want to topple him and replace him with, I don’t even know whom considering their past leading candidate was Bernie Sanders, a year older than Biden. That makes the potshots being taken by leftists at Biden’s age hypocritical.

But that’s what happens with an elderly political class. And D.C. reporters are used to navigating a political leadership that is already on the old side. Biden is losing it, but they’ll cover for him because that’s how the game is played.